


Kneel

by idgit_with_a_fidget



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Threats, different scenarios, some straddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 23:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idgit_with_a_fidget/pseuds/idgit_with_a_fidget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki shows Tony that in the end, he will kneel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kneel

“You _will_ kneel, Stark,” Loki said, mouth twisting into a murderous and mischievous snarl that spat out the billionaire’s name like a piece of rotten meat. “You are your…scouts. You’ll all kneel.”

Tony shrugged his shoulder and spoke into his glass of alcohol. “Yeah, alright, whatever.”

Loki arched a thin black eyebrow in a daring, taunting fashion. He swung his body, the tails of his coat wrapping themselves around his legs. “Oh? You’re so sure you’ll get away? You’re so sure you’ll beat me?”

The view from the tower was magnificently destructive. Already sections of the city were beginning to crumble, the skyline starting to collapse. Masses of crowds were fleeing, screeching and screaming as the other-worldly invaders plummeted from the massive, all-consuming void in the sky. Tony had always liked a bit of excitement. 

“Hey, I never said that,” he took a sip of his drink. The surprisingly mild flavour went down his throat with ease: no burning or bitter, stinging after-tastes. 

The god in the sitting room smiled patronizingly. “Your words say you don’t care and insist you are fine; but your face, your eyes,” he sucked air through his teeth melodramatically in a false wince. “They tell me you’re scared.”

Passing the glass to his opposite hand, Tony held Loki’s gaze. His eyes were chips of pure, luminescent emerald; sharp and lethal. They were more suited to the face of a fox. There was an offbeat fusion of pure hatred and admiration; impressed. Loki was a malevolent zealot, a malign megalomaniac; his goals were ultimately unachievable, and his plan was flawed in many ways, but his enthusiasm and determination was, in Tony’s mind, worth congratulating. One thing was for sure; they may break his body but they could never break his mind. 

“You’re not going to defend yourself?” Loki asked, tone sing-song-like and breezy. “What happened to the bold, confident Tony Stark I had heard so much about? Perhaps I was wrong about you. Evidently you were wrong about me. I’ve already beat each one of your pathetic misfit club members in turn already, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Surely, if you’re as good as you say you are, you should have beaten me by now. I am only one man.”

“Did I mention we have a Hulk?” Tony interjected coolly, refusing to let his own anger levels rise.

“I thought the beast had wandered off. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for getting him back; you haven’t exactly been treating him with the greatest level of compassion, have you?”

Tony clenched his fists, agitation making his blood pound. He rushed forwards to swing a punch in the god’s face, but where his knuckles should have connected with a chin, it kept going, and Tony realised his mistake.

He stumbled, the holographic copy of his opponent disintegrating around him, and he caught his breath, momentarily stunned. He scolded himself for making such a novice, stupid error. 

He barely had time to think before a pair of frosty hands grabbed his shoulders, spun him round and forced him to the carpet with great polygravity. 

The floor smashed into Tony’s back and a gasp of shock and pain escaped his throat as he heard his spine chip. He stared wide-eyed at Loki’s face grinning down on his.

“I told you,” Loki growled, straddling Tony’s chest, one leg outstretched beside the man’s ear and pushing the spiked tip of his staff straight against Tony’s larynx. “You snivelling poltroon. You will kneel.”

“I’d say that this,” Tony breathed, the sceptre digging into his skin, cold as though it had been carved from an icicle. “Isn’t exactly kneeling.”

The deity’s weight was unusually heavy and Tony’s arms were pinned to his side. He swallowed hard and with great difficulty. Loki’s lips curled over his incisors and for a moment he was a cat about to devour a mouse; but not without playing with it first.

“So,” Tony strained again, aware of sweat beads in his hairline and mind racing in attempt to find a solution. JARVIS would be disabled; his suit was now unreliable. “Isn’t this usually the time when you tell me all the things you’re gonna do to me?”

Loki smiled and laughed, but it wasn’t one of good humour. The staff glowed a startling, pulsating blue energy.

“You’re funny,” Loki drawled. “Very funny.”

Tony squirmed, the burden sitting on his chest becoming unbearable and uncomfortable. A prickling itch travelled up his ribs and settled, buzzing on his collar bone as the entire right side of his abdomen turned numb. He was unsure where to look, as no view was pleasant, and to close his eyes would mean to show weakness and surrender. He continued to watch Loki’s face, no matter how much the emerald chips of his eyes seemed to burn.

“First,” Loki traced Tony’s jawline with the hook of the staff, the stubble standing on end as it reacted with the energy. “I’ll capture you and tie you up; lock you away like you tried to do to me. Only this time I’ll succeed. Then I’ll round up your little ensemble, your band of tragic mavericks and I’ll make you watch from your restraints as one by one I’ll pick them off.” Loki’s tongue darted across his mouth as though already tasting the bloodshed. His breathing had quickened.

Tony wriggled, focussing on keeping a calm- and slightly sympathetic- face. “That’s it? You’re gonna kill them? Mindlessly? Just to piss me off?”

Loki laughed again. “Oh, no. No,no, no. I’m not going to kill them. I’m going to _destroy_ them. Slowly. Carefully. Intimately. And if you make any attempt to save them; if a clever idea pops into your head that makes you think you can stop me, to show that you are a hero; I’ll slit them open like a fish with one simple swipe while they’re still breathing and blinking.”

“And what about me? Why keep me?”

“Because killing you physically just will not do. I’ll slay your mind instead. You desire to be seen as a hero, as one of the team, no longer the selfish egomaniac you are, as they see you. You will be placed in a situation where you have every option to save them, to redeem your ‘honour’. But you won’t jump to their rescue. You’ll just watch as the life flickers out from their eyes because you know that there is no other option. And that final image: one of sadness and anger and perhaps even resentful acceptance will haunt your waking consciousness,” Loki’s smirk was worse than any blade through the heart. “That is how you kill a machine, Mr Stark; you tamper with its hard-drive.”

Tony’s stomach churned and he knew that worry had caused his face to crease; there was no preventing such a strong reaction to such violent threats. He blinked away the expression on his brow.

“What if your restraints don’t work?” he pointed out, hoping to gain information. “What are you planning to use? Chains? Steel? Leather? I can break them all; you won’t stand a chance.”

That laugh again. It made Tony feel like a small, insignificant child. Loki bent his face forward so that his mouth was by Tony’s ears. His breath was warm and feverish, unlike his flesh.

“You can’t break these restraints; they’re made from the very ultimatum I proposed,” he confided, and Tony heard the childish glee in his voice. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling defeated and lost. Loki leered. “You see, there is no version of this where you come out on top, Mr Stark and the Avengers. Not one at all.”


End file.
